Collector Antiquities: Museums make mistakes 3

Suspicions about the "Amarna Princess" first arose in early 2006 when a relief, purporting to be Assyrian, was submitted to the British Museum for expert opinion. When it emerged that the relief had come from a certain Greenhalgh family — the same source as the "Amarna Princess" — Scotland Yard was called in.

Now it seems the alabaster torso could be one of any number of fake objects allegedly produced by the same highly skilled team of fakers and forgers between 1989 and 2003. Or indeed, as it turns out, by one single person with a wide range of faking skills!

In the early 1990s paintings purporting to be by the Scottish Colourist S.J. Peploe began circulating in the art trade. Alarm bells rang when the paint fell off! The pictures were traced to a family in Bolton! The same family as the source of the "Armarna Princess".

A rather sad ending.

A good synopsis of the story here>>

Also some detailed information here.

This fairly talented man has created many objects: not least the Risley Park Lanx There is much information about this online so I will not go into it here.

After their own examination of the Amarna Princess Bolton Museum passed it on to others to evaluate, in accordance with their stated best practices. In the first instance this role fell to Christies, who valued the statue at £500,000. The British Museum also agreed that it was a genuine piece. (Though I understand that Dr John Curtis Keeper of the Middle East collections, with special interest in Iraq and Iran saw it and was highly suspicious!)

It has not been revealed exactly what tests were taken or what criteria used to assess the authenticity of the Amarna Princess, beyond the declaration that provenance played "a vital part in the authentication because there was nothing to compare it with," apart from the Louvre Princess.

More than just impressed by the provenance experts also concluded that "although its head, arms and lower legs have not survived.. the statuette is the most impressive example of its kind in the world." It was noted that the back pillar which showed that it was "once part of a double statue."

I have created these pages here because although there is a great deal about this fiasco on the internet it's actually quite difficult to find information about how and why these fakes were at last uncovered as fakes.

The principle reason not a single antiquities dealer in the world woud have touched the "Amarna Princess" is because the iconography is wrong!! (See the previous page on the "short waist vz long waist). That's quite apart from the fact that a proper analysis of the patina would have uncovered it in a moment!

He also created amongst other things:

Three Assyrian marble reliefs allegedly made in 631BC for King Sennacherib's palace and depicting warriors and horses and a part cuneiform inscription were valued at £250,000.

The atypical rendering of a horse's harness and misspellings in cuneiform raised suspicions of the museum experts, who informed the police.

The Greenhalghs created reliefs that were meant to embody a drawing made during an 1850 excavation of room 111 of the palace of Sennacherib, in what is now Iraq. The specific reliefs drawn during the excavation were labelled as having been "lost in history" by the excavating archaeologist, Sir Henry Austin Layard (1817-1894). George suggested that the reliefs might have been purchased by his ancestor at the Silverton Park sale, the catalogue of which he had used for the Amarna Princess provenance con. The stone to make the tablets had been purchased from a mason in Wiltshire—about as far as one can get from ancient Mesopotamia.

A painting called The Meeting House and supposedly signed by LS Lowry failed to convince the Lowry Museum but was sold for £5,000 to a dealer who marketed it for £70,000.

A terracotta sculpture of a playful goose was attributed to Barbara Hepworth, whose genuine work included a similar sculpture which has been lost. It was bought for £3,000 by the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds as a bargain.

The Art Institute of Chicago disclosed that "The Faun," a half-man, half-goat sculpture attributed to Paul Gauguin, was also a Greenhalgh forgery.

Unlike many notorious forgers, who tend to focus on one genre, Shaun Greenhalgh switched among artistic disciplines with amazing dexterity. Even the trial judge, William Morris, acknowledged his "undoubted talent misapplied to the ends of dishonest gain."

The seized forgeries—now in a London vault could have fetched as much as £10 million if the Greenhalghs had managed to pass them off as real. While they are known to have peddled 120 fakes to museums and auction houses since 1989, more may have made it into the market.

A neighbour, who refused to give his name, recalled, "I was finding bits of pottery and coins around the edges of the garden over 20 years back—[things like] bits of metal with old kings on."

More than likely, there are still some celebrated works enshrined on plinths or walls around the world produced by the Talented Mr. Greenhalgh.

In January this year, (2009) Bolton Council said that it might want to borrow the fake from the Metropolitan Police, who are currently holding it in secure storage.

A council spokesman said: "The Amarna statue remains the property of the Metropolitan Police, as ordered by the judge, and therefore could never be housed at [ the Museum] permanently.

"However, we are looking into the possibility of the statue being temporarily returned to be put on special display."

Good for them!

Maybe the British Museum will put this fine forgery of Tetisheri back on display! She presently sits in a dark little room in the basement.

And why not show these fakes too!?

I certainly don't mean to carp about academic experts getting it so wrong. We all make mistakes. Every collector has bought fakes and every serious dealer has unknowingly sold fakes. The point is, let's be open about this and try to share knowledge and learn from our mistakes! Don't hide them away!

An interesting update about the Greenhalgh fakes

And now for something somewhat alarming>>>>